Jim Jensen Takes Over

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When the baton is passed in a relay race, both runners have to be moving at roughly the same speed. This condition should be met when a company chairman hands over leadership to a new chairman. And when a company is growing as fast as Thousand Trails, the task of finding a new man who can keep up the pace is especially important.

In September 1981, 40-year-old Jim Jensen became Thousand Trails's new chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Milt Kuolt, founder and retiring chairman, will still be associated with the company but most of his time will be spent starting a new commuter airline to serve the Northwest. Both men eyeballed each other carefully for a year and a half before finalizing their deal. "I liked what I saw," says Jensen. "Trails is America's best kept secret. On a scale of 1 to 10, the quality of the product and the service is 10." And Kuolt in his turn, gives Jensen equally high marks. "All you have to do," he says "is look at Jim's track record and you know he's the right man for the job."

Indeed, even a quick glance at the statistics proves that Jensen is fast on his feet. At 27, he became the youngest man in the history of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. to hold the position of international sales manager. At 32, he was appointed president of Gran-Tree Furniture Rental Corp., a subsidiary of GranTree Corp., based in Portland, Oreg.

Jensen would have made Horatio Alger proud. He's the proverbial selfmade man; a college dropout who once sold pots and pans, married his childhood sweetheart, and then worked his way to the top. With only six months left in his senior year, he left the University of Washington after a frustrating job interview with a representative of a well-known insurance company. "We'll start you off at $500," the man said. "That sounds all right," Jensen said, "$500 a week isn't bad." "You misunderstand," the man cautioned. "It's $500 a month." Jensen, who was already making $22,000 a year selling Encyclopaedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World part-time, decided to make it full time. "I was bored with school," he says, "and I didn't want to lose my momentum."

Only a few years later, the newly married Jensen was running the Chicago branch of Britannica's Great Books Division. In addition, he was the director of the company's national management training program. At 28, he was appointed vice-president of sales and marketing for the Great Books Division in the United States. "He did an outstanding job for us," Chuck Swanson, president of Britannica says. "He had a lot of drive, he was ambitious, and he had good rapport with other salespeople. I wish we had him back."

But Jensen had told Swanson that he needed a "different kind of challenge, something in sales but not in books." In 1973, Jensen spotted the right challenge at GrantTree Corp. Walker M. Treece, Gran Tree's chairman and chief executive officer, recalls that, at the time, the company was eager to expand its position in the furniture rental market. "There is no question," Threece says, "but that Jim was the architect who developed the sales organization that confirmed our commitment to this market." Treece says that during Jensen's tenure as president of the subsidiary, its contribution to consolidated revenues rose from a modest percentage to become the principal component. He points out that by year-end 1978, GranTree's consolidated revenues had reached over $68 million and that it was primarily composed of furniture rentals and related activities.

According to an agreement between Jensen and Treece, Jensen's responsibilities were fully discharged by January 1979, and Jensen was free to explore opportunities elsewhere. Jensen simply abandoned the corporate grind for the next two years and moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, with his wife Jeri, and their three children.

While Jensen was living in Sun Valley, a friend introduced him to Milt Kuolt and suggested the two had a lot in common. "He was right," Jensen says. "We spoke the same language." The relationship deepened quickly. In January 1980, Kuolt called and asked Jensen if he was tired of skiing yet. Maybe, Kuolt suggested, he would like to take a closer look at Thousand Trails. In March, Jensen conducted a five-year planning session with the company's senior management. By that summer, Kuolt was flying regularly between Seattle and Sun Valley to probe Jensen's reactions to an even more pointed question: Would Jensen take over as chairman at Thousand Trails? "He said he had fulfilled his contribution to the company," Jensen recalls. "He's a visionary, an entrepreneur. I think he feels in his heart that he's given what he can." In September 1980, Jensen was made vice-chairman of the board with the understanding that the position might evolve to chairmanship.

In August of 1981, only one week after a company press release announced that the baton had changed hands, Jensen was already running hard. He had just finished breakfast in the mirrored dining room of New York's Sherry Netherlands Hotel and was anxiously checking his watch. He answered a few more questions, and then he was off to tell "America's best kept secret" to institutional investors.